


on vessels

by flightsofangels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angelic Possession (Supernatural), Castiel's True Form (Supernatural), Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fluff, Human Castiel (Supernatural), I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, No Smut, Post-Canon Fix-It, Trans Dean Winchester, it's discussed anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28688757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightsofangels/pseuds/flightsofangels
Summary: “You know,” Cas mutters into Dean’s bare skin. “When I was still… an angel, I used to dream that I would take you as my vessel.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 32
Kudos: 376





	on vessels

**Author's Note:**

> this fic takes place in some nebulous space post-15.19, where jack pulled cas out of the empty (and gave up his god powers to have a childhood with his family in the bunker). i don't acknowledge anything in the finale as canonical.
> 
> this was also inspired by @autisticandroids on tumblr and their "wrong or eaten" theory/tag.
> 
> enjoy!

“You know,” Cas mutters into Dean’s bare skin. “When I was still… an angel, I used to dream that I would take you as my vessel.”

“Mh?” comes Dean’s response. He’s still out of it from their earlier activities, turned boneless and sluggish under Cas’ care. In a moment of self-indulgence, Cas allows his newly human heart to sing out in praise of Dean Winchester, Righteous Man, where he lays in Cas’ bed. Their bed. He thinks he’ll never get used to this.

“It was a selfish desire, but even then – as devoted a follower as I was of Heaven’s orders – I wanted to keep you safely tucked away in the recesses of my true form.”

Cas is still lying in Dean’s arms, his ear resting on the spot his chest connects to his shoulder, and Dean’s heartbeat pounds away. But that seems to jolt Dean, Cas listening to the air as it is sucked in through his nose in a sharp inhale. Dean’s head rises slightly from where it was sunken into his pillow, his eyes meeting Cas’.

“You telling me you wanted to possess me?”

Cas hears the edge to the question, sharp as an angel blade held against his jugular. _One wrong move and I’ll plunge it in_ , Dean seems to say.

“This was before,” Cas rushes to correct. “Before Michael, even before Lucifer had been set free from the Cage.” Dean appears to relax at that, if only slightly; the blade lowered but not tossed aside entirely. “I was still an angel in every sense of the word – as much as I ever had been, what with Naomi’s interference. I believed myself to be truly loyal; devoted wholeheartedly to my cause. But when I touched your soul in Hell…”

In Castiel’s very, very long life, the day he pulled the Righteous Man from the pit and declared him saved is one that trumps nearly any other. Advising kings or watching nature evolve over millennia pales in comparison to the brilliance of Dean’s soul – angels cannot taste, not like humans, but when Castiel pulled the soul into his wheels for safekeeping as he flew _up, up up_ , Castiel felt electricity on a tongue he didn’t yet possess.

“When I remade your body, stitched together the wounds and the scar tissue and made a home for you there,” he continues, his gaze solidly fixed on Dean’s. His hand resting between the twin scars under his pecs where Castiel’s grace had stitched his skin flat, just as Dean had always ached for it to be. Dean swallows, his jaw working in that way it does when he wants to say something but his mind won’t let him heave his heart into his throat. “I considered, briefly, not seeking a vessel on Earth but rather taking this body crafted by an angel and making it into a home for me, too.”

Cas doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, why he’s saying these things that have lived in him for over a decade – an amount of time that seems so much more significant now that he’s human – but it feels good, letting it out. The way Dean’s blushing is hardly something to complain about, either.

“Why…” Dean starts, but he trails off, letting out a shaky exhale.

“I loved you even then,” Cas says, and it’s the easiest thing in the world. He hadn’t known it then, but Hester was right when she said that he was lost the moment he laid a hand on Dean Winchester. Lost in the eyes of Heaven, but Cas has never been more certain of where he belongs than he is when Dean’s arms are around him.

Dean, for his part, is reacting about the same way he reacts to most of Cas’ confessions: silence, unable to say anything for fear of those walls he had so carefully constructed tumbling down. He swallows again, and manages to say, “Yeah?”

Cas nods, leaning in to press his lips against the sensitive skin just above Dean’s collarbone. He breathes him in, lets the human sensation wash over him, relishing in it. After a moment, he nods again, his nose nestled into the crook of his neck.

“At the time, I didn’t know it. I was – Well, you remember,” Cas mutters with a smile. Under him, he feels Dean chuckle.

“Just a winged asshat,” Dean says. Cas can hear the smile in his voice, feel his hands running through his hair.

“Pretty much.”

A few seconds pass. Cas was going to say more, really, but this moment is nice. He doesn’t want to spoil it with words, at least not yet.

“That it?” comes Dean’s voice above him, the rumble of his chest under him. _I did that_ , Cas thinks. _I made that voice match him_. Gruff yet capable of such softness.

“Well, I couldn’t comprehend love, but hunger? Still unfamiliar, but infinitely easier to process. I didn’t know I loved you, so I wanted to eat you.”

That gets a response. Dean shifts under him, and Cas looks up to see Dean’s brow knit in confusion.

“Sorry, eat me?”

“Figuratively.”

There’s another pause, then Dean shakes his head, making that odd expression he only seems to make around Cas. It reminds him of when they left that club, years ago, after Castiel had committed some human social faux pas or another and Dean told him he hadn’t laughed that hard in his life. It was a nice sound.

“You gonna elaborate on that?”

Oh. It still evades him, the intricacies of human conversation. Cas thought he had been perfectly clear, but he explains regardless. “I wanted to keep you tucked away, safe in your own mind, held in the deepest recesses of my angelic presence. I wanted to share this body –” Cas runs a hand over Dean’s side, tracing old scars from knives and bullet wounds and flesh that has finally started to have padding underneath rather than taut muscle – “I wanted to cohabitate. I wanted to speak in your voice and tell you how radiant you are. How beautiful. How _good_.”

Dean takes a deep breath, and Cas feels it under him – the rise and fall of his chest. His lips are parted only slightly, and Cas reaches up to cup his cheek in his hand, gently pushing on Dean’s lower lip; just enough to scrape against his teeth. His mouth is warm, and he needs lip balm.

“Cohabitate?” Dean says softly against Cas’ thumb. The idea feels reverent in his mouth.

Cas knows the way Dean was treated by Michael. Watched him in the weeks during and after, saw how desperate he was for his mind and body to remain his own. Even a full decade before, Cas never would have violated Dean like that. No, he would treat Dean’s body with the kindness it deserved. Treat Dean with the kindness he deserves. He says as much, and Dean shudders under him, his eyes drifting shut for just a moment.

“I thought I understood devotion before. Duty. But you – I know I’ve said it before, but you really did change me. Mindless obedience isn’t love. Gentleness, tenderness, kindness – those are love. I would show you love.” It’s amazing, really, how easy it is to say these things now.

Dean’s hand reaches up to hold Cas’, pulls it from his mouth and brings it back to press a chaste kiss to his knuckles.

“What –” He swallows again – “What else?” Dean’s almost whispering now, like he’s afraid Sam or Jack might hear from their rooms down the hall, so he has to be quiet. Cas knows from experience that Dean doesn’t need to worry about being overheard.

“Well,” Cas continues, and he may not have thought about this specific fantasy in years, but it’s still just as vivid as it was before he Fell. He lays on his back, pressing his side into Dean’s, staring up at the fan on the ceiling, his hand snaking up under the pillows to toy with Dean’s hair. “I would never lock you away like Michael did. I would let you share my eyes, _your_ eyes, hear what I hear – save for angel radio, I’m afraid that wouldn’t go over well with a human mind – and when you wanted control, I would give it to you. I would keep your body safe, heal it automatically after a battle just as mine did when I was an angel. You wouldn’t be able to sneak off and get yourself hurt. I would always be there to heal you.”

Cas leans in, presses a gentle kiss to the spot just above his Adam’s apple, breathing it in. “This is where my grace would go,” he says simply. Cas reaches his free hand to take Dean’s, placing it gently on the spot, letting him feel it. “Right there. Can you imagine that? My grace, running through you. Me, trusting you to hold it, keep it safe just as I would keep you.”

He says more, rolling back to stare at the ceiling as he lists off details of how he would treat Dean the way he deserved to be treated as a vessel, as a friend, as a lover and a partner and an equal, but then Dean interrupts with, “Cas, I–” His voice is rough, thick with scarcely concealed emotion.

“Yes, Dean?”

“Cas, can you look at me?” He does, and he sees something scared in Dean’s eyes.

“Is everything alright?” Cas asks, suddenly worried he’s done something wrong. Asked for too much, said too much.

“Yeah, yeah, man. I just–” Dean shifts slightly, grasping for Cas’ hand where it’s come to rest again on Dean’s chest. “I just need something to, uh, ground me. I think.”

“Of course.” He says nothing for a time, the both of them just looking at each other, thinking about what has been said. “Do you… need anything else?”

Cas says after a few seconds have passed. Dean shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to be panicking, but even though Cas knows Dean remarkably well, it can still be difficult to read him. Especially without his grace to guide him.

“Nah, I’m alright. That’s just, uh. A lot.”

“I can stop if you want me to, Dean.” Cas still holds his gaze.

“Hey, I ain’t complaining,” Dean says, and Cas sincerely doubts he’d intended it to come out as softly as it did.

Seeing Dean like this makes Cas feel positively reverent. Is this what it’s like to know God? The good God, the mythical God Cas had believed in so long ago? What was it Rowena had said to him that once – that he was _shattered at the altar of Winchester_? That statement has never rung so true; if Cas were made of porcelain or glass or weaker stuff than skin and bones and meat and tissue he would be broken into a thousand tiny pieces on the floor.

He presses worship into Dean’s skin, asking for nothing but to have his praise be received. Dean, never one to admit defeat, lets him, even when the whispered prayers make his face hot and tomato-red. Minutes pass, Cas thinks, maybe hours; it’s hard to tell in the bunker, cut off from the sun. It hardly matters. What matters is the man under him, the man Cas sometimes aches to devour still, albeit in a different sense. When they’ve tired themselves out and there remains nothing to be said – at least for now – they hold each other in silence, an unspoken decision to sleep.

Dean cranes his neck to whisper into Cas’ ear, the one not pressed into his chest where his head lays. Half of a confession they’ve both repeated time and time again since Cas’ rescue from the Empty, a response that needs no cue.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this was my first time writing for spn, hope i did them justice.  
> feel free to check out my spn tumblr @deangenders <3


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